Marantz set something of a benchmark with its top-of-the-range, highly over-specified £5,000 UD9004 universal Blu-ray player. But the company has now announced a toned-down version, the UD8004, a snip at half the price.
The UD8004 makes a gallant attempt to incorporate almost all of its big brother’s technology, while going on a New Year-style diet. Slimmed down from its 20kg weightiness, the new model incorporates the same Blu-ray, DVD-Video, SACD, DVD-Audio and CD playback capability, along with a feast of high-performance technologies to get the best from the formats.
Marantz UD8004 Universal Blu-ray Player
There’s an Anchor Bay ABT2015 processor to upscale standard DVD and Marantz claims that a newly developed, proprietary, high precision mechanism offers extraordinarily accurate disc reading.
There are three separate audio circuit boards for audio replay, each featuring Current Feedback technology and powered by their own individual transformers. These feature 192kHz/24-bit Burr-Brown DACs, symmetrical circuit topology with short mirror imaged signal paths to help improve the precision of the stereo imaging and Marantz’s own HDAM-SA2 compact signal amplifiers.
As you’d expect from a high-end player like this, there’s an audio ‘pure direct’ mode that cuts off the display and all non-critical electronics for distortion-free audio playback.
There’s also HDMI 1.3a connectivity for 36-bit Deep Color support, Profile 2.0 for BD-Live, built in decoders for Dolby True HD and DTS HD High Definition audio format replay, and 24FPS capability.
The player also sports a SD-Card slot ready for SD-HC (high capacity) cards, allowing you to play WMA, MP3, AVCHD and JPEG files. Even the disc tray is made from a special ultra-rigid polymeric alloy designed to eliminate the possibility of vibration and it has gold-plated outputs too.
The Marantz UD8004 is available now for £2,300.